 CHAPTER 1. PART 1. The three or four two-let boards had stood within the low pailing as long as the inhabitants of the little triangular square could remember, and if they had ever been vertical it was a very long time ago. They now overhung the palings each at its own angle, and resembled nothing so much as a row of wooden choppers, ever in the act of falling upon some passer-by, yet never cutting off a tenet for the old house from the stream of his fellows. Not that there was ever any great stream through the square, the stream passed a furlonger and more away, beyond the intricacy of tenements and alleys and by-ways that had sprung up since the old house had been built, hemming it in completely, and probably the house itself was only suffered to stand depending the falling in of a lease or two, when doubtless a clearance would be made of the whole neighbourhood. It was of bloomy old red brick, and built into its walls with the crowns and clasped hands and other insignia of insurance companies long since defunct. The children of the secluded square had swung upon the low gate at the end of the entrance alley until little more than the solid top bar of it remained, and the alley itself ran past boarded basement windows on which tramps had chalked their cryptic marks. The path was washed and worn uneven by the spilling of water from the eaves of the encroaching next house, and cats and dogs had made the approach their own. The chances of a tenant did not seem such as to warrant the keeping of the two-let boards in a state of legibility and repair, and as a matter of fact they were not so kept. For six months Olaran had passed the old place twice a day or oftener on his way from his lodgings to the room ten minutes walk away he had taken to work in, and for six months no hatchet-like notice boards had fallen across his path. This might have been due to the fact that he usually took the other side of the square, but he chanced to one morning to take the side that ran past the broken gate and the rain-worn entrance alley, and to pause before one of the inclined boards. The board bore, besides the agent's name, the announcement written apparently about the time of Olaran's own early youth, that the key was to be had at number six. Now Olaran was already paying for his separate bedroom and workroom more than an author who without private means habitually disregards his public can afford, and he was paying, in addition, a small rent for the storage of the greater part of his grandmother's furniture. Moreover, it invariably happened that the book he wished to read in bed was at his working quarters half a mile and more away, while the note or letter he had sudden need of during the day was as likely as not to be in the pocket of another coat hanging behind his bedroom door, and there were other inconveniences in having a divided domicile. Therefore Olaran, brought suddenly up by the hatchet-like notice-board, looked first down through some scanty privet bushes at the boarded basement windows, then up at the blank and grimy windows of the first floor, and so up to the second floor and the flat stone coping of the leads. He stood for a minute thumbing his lean and shaven jaw, then with another glance at the board he walked slowly across the square to number six. He knocked and waited for two or three minutes, but although the door stood open, received no answer. He was knocking again when a long-nosed man in shirt sleeves appeared. I was asking a blessing on our food, he said, in severe explanation. Olaran asked if he might have the key of the old house, and the long-nosed man withdrew again. Olaran waited for another five minutes on the step, and then the man appearing again and masticating some of the food of which he had spoken, announced that the key was lost. But you won't want it, he said. He entered its door, isn't closed, and a push opened any of the others. I'm an agent for it if you're thinking of taking it. Olaran recrossed the square, descended the two steps at the broken gate, passed along the alley, and turned in at the old wide doorway. To the right, immediately within the door, steps descended to the roomy cellars, and the staircase before him had a carved rail, and was broad and handsome and filthy. Olaran ascended it, avoiding contact with the rail and wall, and stopped at the first landing. A door facing him had been boarded up, but he pushed at that on his right hand, and an insecure bolt or staple yielded. He entered the empty first floor. He spent a quarter of an hour in the place, and then came out again. Without mounting higher, he descended and recrossed the square to the house of the man who had lost the key. Can you tell me how much the rent is? he asked. The man mentioned a figure, the comparative loneness of which seemed accounted for by the character of the neighborhood, and the abominable state of unrepair of the place. Would it be possible to rent a single floor? The long-nosed man did not know. They might. Who were they? The man gave Olaran the name of a firm of lawyers in Lincoln's Inn. You might mention my name. Barrett, he added. Pressure of work prevented Olaran from going down to Lincoln's Inn that afternoon, but he went on the morrow, and was instantly offered the whole house as a purchase for fifty pounds down, the remainder of the purchase money to remain on mortgage. It took him half an hour to disabuse the lawyer's mind of the idea that he wished anything more of the place than to rent a single floor of it. This made certain hums and haws of a difference, and the lawyer was by no means certain that it lay within his power to do as Olaran suggested. But it was finally extracted from him that provided the notice-borns were allowed to remain up, and that, provided it was agreed that in the event of the whole house letting the arrangement should terminate automatically without further notice, something might be done. That the old place should suddenly let over his head seemed to Olaran the slightest of risks to take, and he promised a decision within a week. On the morrow he visited the house again and went through it from top to bottom, and then went home to his lodgings to take a bath. He was immensely taken with that portion of the house he had already determined should be his own, scraped, clean and repainted, and with that old furniture of Olaran's grandmothers it ought to be entirely charming. He went to the storage-warehouse to refresh his memory of his half-forgotten belongings, and to take measurements, and thence he went to a decorator's. He was very busy with his regular work, and could have wished that the notice-born had caught his attention either a few months earlier or else later in the year, but the quickest way would be to suspend work entirely until after his removal. A fortnight later his first floor was painted throughout in a tender, elder-flower white. The paint was dry, and Olaran was in the middle of his installation. He was animated, delighted, and he rubbed his hands as he polished and made disposals of his grandmothers' effects, the tall that his paint china cupboard, with its derby and mason and spode, the large folding charretten table, the long, low book-shelves he had had two of them copied, the chairs, the sheffield candlesticks, the riveted rose-bowls. These things he set against his newly painted elder-white walls. Walls of wood paneled in the happiest proportions, and moulded and coffoured to the low seated window-recesses in a mood of gaiety, and rest that the builders of rooms no longer know. The ceilings were lofty and faintly painted with an old pattern of stars. Even the tapering mouldings of his iron fireplace were as delicately designed as jewellery, and Olaran walked about, rubbing his hands, frequently stopping for the mere pleasure of the glimpses from white room to white room. Charming! Charming! he said to himself. I wonder what Elsie Bengoff will think of this. He bought a bolt and a Yale lock for his door, and shut off his quarters from the rest of the house. If he now wanted to read in bed, his book could be heard for stepping into the next room. All the time, he thought how exceedingly lucky he was to get the place. He put up a hat-rack in the little square hall, and hung up his hats and caps and coats, and passes through the small triangular square late at night, looking up over the little serried row of wooden to-let hatchets, could see the light within Olaran's red blinds, or else the sudden darkening of one blind and the illumination of another, as Olaran, candlestick in hand, passed from room to room, making final settlings of his furniture, or preparing to resume the work that his removal had interrupted. As far as the chief business of his life, his writing, was concerned, Paul Olaran treated the world a good deal better than he was treated by it, but he seldom took the trouble to strike a balance, or to compute how far, at forty-four years of age, he was behind his points on the handicap. To have done so wouldn't have altered matters, and it might have depressed Olaran. He had chosen his path, and was committed to it beyond possibility of withdrawal. Perhaps he had chosen it in the days when he had been easily swayed by something a little disinterested, a little generous, a little noble, and had he ever thought of questioning himself. He would still have held to it that a life without nobility and generosity and disinterestedness was no life for him. Only quite recently, and rarely, had he even vaguely suspected that there was more in it than this, but it was no good anticipating the day when, he supposed, he would reach that maximum point of his powers beyond which he must inevitably decline, and be left face to face with the question whether it would not have profited him better to have ruled his life by less exigent ideals. In the meantime, his removal into the old house and with the insurance marks built into his brick merely interrupted Romilly Bishop at the fifteenth chapter. As this tall man with the lean, ascetic face moved about his new abode, arranging, changing, altering, hardly yet into his working stride again, he gave the impression of almost spinster-like precision and nicety. For twenty years past, in a score of lodgings, garrets, flats, and rooms furnished and unfurnished, he had been accustomed to do many things for himself, and he had discovered that it saves time and temper to be methodical. He had arranged with the wife of the long-nosed barret, a stout Welsh woman with a falsetto voice, the marionneth sheer accent of which long residents in London had not perceptibly modified, to come across the square each morning to prepare his breakfast, and also to turn the place out on Saturday mornings, and for the rest he even welcomed a little housework as a relaxation from the strain of writing. His kitchen, together with the adjoining strip of an apartment into which a modern bath had been fitted, overlooked the alley at the side of the house, and at one end of it was a large closet with a door, and a square sliding hatch in the upper part of the door. This had been a powder closet, and through the hatch the elaborately dressed head had been thrust to receive the click and puff of the powder pistol. Over on puzzled a little over this closet, then, as its use occurred to him, he smiled faintly, a little moved. He knew not by what. He would have to put it to a very different purpose from its original one. It would probably have to serve as his larder. It was in this closet that he made a discovery. The back of it was shelved, and rummaging on an upper shelf that ran deeply into the wall, Ollron found a couple of mushroom-shaped, old wooden wig stands. He did not know how they had come to be there. Downforce the painters had turned them up somewhere or other and had put them there. But his five rooms, as a whole, were short of cupboard and closet room, and it was only by the exercise of some ingenuity that he was able to find places for the bestowal of his household linen, his boxes, and his seldom used, but not to be destroyed, accumulations of papers. It was in the early spring that Ollron entered on his tenancy, and he was anxious to have Romerly ready for publication in the coming autumn. Nevertheless he did not intend to force its production. Should it demand longer in the doing, so much the worse, he realized its importance, its crucial importance in his artistic development, and it must have its own length and time. In the workroom he had recently left, he had been making excellent progress. Romerly had begun, as the saying is, to speak an act of herself, and he did not doubt she would continue to do so the moment the distraction of his removal was over. This distraction was almost over. He told himself it was time he pulled himself together again, and on a March morning he went out, returned again with two great bunches of yellow duffinels, placed one bunch on his mantelpiece between the Sheffield sticks and the other on the table before him, and took out the half-completed manuscript of Romerly Bishop. But before beginning work he went to a small Rosewood cabinet and took from a drawer his checkbook and passbook. He totted them up and his monk-like face grew thoughtful. His installation had cost him more than he had intended it should, and his balance was rather less than fifty pounds, with no immediate prospect of more. I had forgotten rugs and chintz curtains, and so forth, mounted up so, said Oleron, but it would have been a pity to spoil the place for the want of ten pounds or so. Well, Romerly simply must be out for the autumn. That's all. So here goes. He drew his papers towards him. But he worked badly, or rather, he did not work at all. The square outside had its own noises, frequent and new, and Oleron could only hope that he would speedily become accustomed to these. First came hawkers with their carts and cries. At midday the children returning from school drooped into the square and swung on Oleron's gate. And when the children had departed again for afternoon school, an itinerant musician with a mandolin posted himself beneath Oleron's window he began to strum. This was a not unpleasant distraction, and Oleron pushing up his window through the manor penny. Then he returned to his table again. But it was no good. He came to himself, at long intervals, to find that he had been looking about his room and wondering how he had been formally furnished. Whether a saty and but a cup of petunia satin had stood under the father's window, whether from the centre moulding of the light's lofty ceiling had depended a glimmering crystal chandelier, or where the tambour frame or the picket table had stood. No, it was no good. He had far better be, frankly, doing nothing than getting fruitlessly tired, and he decided that he would take a walk. But, chanceing to sit down for a moment, dozed in his chair instead. This won't do, he yawned when he awoke at half-past four in the afternoon. I must do better than this to-morrow. And he felt so deliciously, lady, that for some minutes he even contemplated the breach of an appointment he had for the evening. The next morning he sat down to work without even permitting himself to answer one of his three letters. Two of them tradesmen's accounts, the third a note from Miss Bengoff forwarded from his old address. It was a jolly day of white and blue, with a gay, noisy wind and a subtle turn in the colour of growing things, and over and over again, once or twice a minute his room became suddenly light and then subdued again as the shining white clouds fitful illumination was reflected in the polished surface of the table and even in the foot-worn old floor and the morning noises had begun again. Olaron made a pattern of dots on the paper before him and then broke off to move the jar of duffinels exactly opposite the centre of the creamy panel. Then he wrote a sentence that ran continuously for a couple of lines after which it broke on into notes and jottings. For a time he succeeded in persuading himself in making these memoranda he was really working. Then he rose and began to pace his room. As he did so he was struck by an idea it was that the place might possibly be a little better for more positive colour. It was perhaps a thought too pale, mild and sweet as a kind old face but a little devitalised, even worn. Yes, decidedly it would bear a robusta note, more and richer flowers and some warm and gay stuff for cushions for the window seats. Of course, I really can't afford it, he muttered, as he went for a two-foot and began to measure the width of the window recesses. In stooping to measure a recess his attitude suddenly changed to one of interest and attention. Presently he rose again, rubbing his hands with gentle glee. Ho-ho! He said, these look to me very much like window-boxes nailed up. We must look into this. The window's a-boxes or I'm Ho-ho! This is an adventure! On that wall of his sitting-room there were two windows the third was in another corner and beyond the open-bedroom door on the same wall was another. The seats of all had been painted, repainted and painted again and Oleron's investigating finger and barely detected the old nail-heads beneath the paint. Under the ledge over which he stooped Oleron took out his pen-knife. He worked carefully for five minutes and then went into the kitchen for a hammer and chisel. Driving the chisel cautiously under the seat he started the whole lid slightly. Again using the pen-knife he cut along the hinged edge and outward along the ends and then he fetched a wedge and a wooden mallet. Now for our little mystery, he said. The sound of the mallet on the wedge seemed in that sweet and pale apartment somehow a little brutal, and shocking. The panelling rang and rattled and vibrated to the blows like a sounding-board. The whole house seemed to echo from the roomy cellarage to the garrots above a flock of echoes seemed to awake and the sound got a little on Oleron's nerves. All at once he paused, fetched a duster and muffled the mallet. When the edge was sufficiently raised he put his fingers under it and lifted. The paint flaked and starred a little. The rusty old nails squeaked and grunted and the lid came up, laying open the box beneath. Oleron looked into it. Safe for a couple of inches of scurve and mould and old cobwebs, it was empty. No treasure there, said Oleron, a little amused that he should have fancied there might have been. Romerly will still have to be out by the autumn. Let's have a look at the others. He turned the second window. The raising of the two remaining seats occupied him until well into the afternoon. That of the bedroom, like the first, was empty. But from the second seat of his sitting-room he drew out something yielding and folded and furred over an inch thick with dust. He carried the object into the kitchen and, having swept his over a bucket, took a duster to it. It was some sort of large bag of ancient, freeze-like material and when unfolded it occupied the greater part of the small kitchen floor. In shape it was an irregular, very irregular triangle and it had a couple of wide flaps with the remains of straps and buckles. The patch that had been uppermost in the folding was of faded yellowish-brown but the rest of it was shades of crimson that appeared according to the exposure of the parts of it. Now, whatever can that have been Oleron mused as he stood surveying it. I give it up, whatever it is. It settled my work for to-day, I'm afraid. He folded the object up carelessly and thrust it into a corner of the kitchen. Taking pans and brushes and an old knife, he returned to the sitting-room and began to scrape and to wash and to line with paper his newly discovered receptacles. When he had finished he put his spare boots and books and papers into them and he closed the lids again, amused with his little adventure, but also a little anxious for the hour to come when he should settle fairly down to his work again. It peaked Oleron a little that his friend Miss Bengoff himself had found so singularly winning. Indeed, she scarcely lifted her eyes to it. But then she had always been more or less like that, a little indifferent to the graces of life, careless of appearances, and perhaps a shade more herself when she ate biscuits from her paper bag than when she dined with greater observance of the convenances. She was an unattached journalist of thirty-four, large, showy, fair as butter, pink as a dog-rose, reminding one of a florist's picked specimen bloom and given to women and ample movements and moist and explosive utterances. She pulled a better living out of the pool, as she expressed it, than Oleron did, and by cunningly disguised puffs of drapers and haberdasher's, she pulled, also the greater part of her very varied wardrobe. She left small whirlwinds of air behind her when she moved, in which her veils and scarves fluttered and spun. Oleron heard the flurry of her skirts knock at his door, when he had been a month in his new abode. Her garments brought in the outer air, and she flung a bundle of ladies' journals down on a chair. Don't knock off for me," she said, across a mouth full of large, headed hatpins as she removed her hat and veil. I didn't know whether you were straight yet, so I bought some sandwiches for lunch. You've got coffee, I suppose. No, don't get up. I'll find the kitchen. Oh, that's all right. I'll clear these things away. To tell the truth, I'm rather glad to be interrupted," said Oleron. He gathered his work together and put it away. She was already in the kitchen. He heard the running of water into the kettle. He joined her, and ten minutes later followed her back to the sitting-room with the coffee and sandwiches on a tray. They sat down with the tray on a small table between them. Well, what do you think of the new place? Oleron asked as she poured out coffee. Hmm! Anybody think you're going to get married, Paul? He laughed. Oh, no! But it's an improvement on some of them, isn't it? I suppose it is, I don't know. I like the last place in spite of the black ceiling and no water tap. How's Romilly? Oleron thumbed his chin. Hmm! I'm rather ashamed to tell you. The fact is, I've not got on very well with it. But it will be all right on the night, as you used to say. Stuck? Rather stuck. Got any of which you care to read to me? Oleron had long been in the habit of reading portions of his work to Miss Bengoff occasionally. Her comments were always quick and practical, sometimes directly useful, sometimes indirectly suggestive. She, in return for his confidence, always kept all mention of her own work sedulously from him. His, she said, was real work, hers merely filled space, not always even grammatically. I'm afraid there isn't, Oleron replied, still meditatively dry-shaving his chin. Then he handed, with a little burst of candour, the fact is, Elsie, I've not written, not actually written, very much more of it, any more of it, in fact. But, of course, that doesn't mean I haven't progressed. I've progressed in one sense, rather alarmingly. I'm now thinking of reconstructing the whole thing. Miss Bengoff give a gasp. Reconstructing? Making Rommelie herself a different type of woman. Somehow I've begun to feel that I'm not getting the most out of her. As she stands, I've certainly lost interest in her to some extent. But that Miss Bengoff protested. You had her so real, so living, Paul. Oleron smiled faintly. He had been quite prepared for Miss Bengoff's disapproval. He wasn't surprised that she liked Rommelie, as she at present existed. She would. Whether she realised it or not, there was much of herself in his fictitious creation. Naturally, Rommelie would seem real, living to her. But are you really serious, Paul? Miss Bengoff asked presently, with a round eyed stare. Quite serious. You really go to scrap those fifteen chapters. I didn't exactly say that. That fine rich love scene. I should only do it reluctantly, and for the sake of something I thought better. And that beautiful, beautiful description of Rommelie on the shore. It wouldn't necessarily be wasted, he said, a little uneasily. But Miss Bengoff made a large and windy gesture, and then let him have it. Really, you are too trying, she broke out. I do wish sometimes she'd remember your human life in a world. You know I'd be the last to wish you to lower your standards one inch, but it wouldn't be lowering it to bring it within human comprehension. Oh yes, sometimes altogether too godlike. Why, it would be a wicked criminal waste of your powers to destroy those fifteen chapters. Look at it reasonably now. You've been working for nearly twenty years. You've now got what you've been working for almost within your grasp. Your affairs are at a most critical stage. Oh, don't tell me. I know you're about at the end of your money. And here you are, deliberately proposing to withdraw a thing that will probably make your name, and to substitute for it something that ten to one nobody on earth will ever want to read, and small blame to them. Really, you try my patience." Oleron had shaken his head slowly as she had talked. It was an old story between them. The noisy, able, practical journalist was an admirable friend up to a certain point. Beyond that, well, each of us knows that point beyond which we stand alone. Elsie Bengoff sometimes said that had she one-tenth part of Oleron's genius there were few things she could not have done, thus making that genius a quantitatively divisible thing, a sort of ingredient to be added to or subtracted from in the admixture of his work, that it was a qualitative thing, essential, indivisible, informing, past her comprehension. Their spirits parted company at that point. Oleron knew it. She did not appear to know it. Yes, yes, yes, he said a little wearily, by and by. Practically you're quite right, entirely right, and I haven't a word to say. If I could only turn Romley over to you, you'd make an enormous success of her. But that can't be, and I, for my part, am seriously doubting whether she's worth my while. You know what that means. What does it mean? she demanded bluntly. Well, he said, smiling warmly. What does it mean when you're convinced a thing isn't worth doing? You simply don't do it. Miss Bengoff's eyes swept the ceiling for assistance against this impossible man. What utter rubbish, she broke out at last. Why, when I saw you last, you were simply oozing Romley. You were turning her off at the rate of four chapters a week. If you hadn't moved, you'd have had her three parts done by now. What on earth possessed you to move right in the middle of your most important work? Oleron tried to put her off with a recital of inconveniences, but she wouldn't have it. Perhaps in her heart she partly suspected the reason. He was simply mortally weary of the narrow circumstances of his life. He had had twenty years of it. Twenty years of garrets and roof chambers and dingy flats and shabby lodgings, and he was tired of dinginess and shabbiness. The reward was as far off as ever, or if it was not, he no longer cared as once he would have cared to put out his hand and take it. It is all very well to tell a man who is at the point of exhaustion that only another effort is required of him. If he cannot make it, he is as far off as ever. Anyway, Oleron summed up, I'm happier here than I've been for a long time. That's some sort of justification. And doing no work, said Miss Bengoff pointedly, at that a trifling petulance that had been gathering in Oleron came to her head. And why should I do nothing but work? He demanded, how much happier am I for it? I don't say I don't love my work when it's done, but I hate doing it. Sometimes it's an intolerable burden that I simply long to be rid of. Once in many weeks it has a moment, one moment of glow and thrill for me. I remember the days when it was all glow and thrill, and now I'm forty-four, and it's becoming drudgery. Nobody wants it. I'm ceasing to want it myself. And if any ordinary sensible man were to ask me whether I didn't think I was a fool to go on, I think I should agree that I was. Miss Bengoff's cumbly pink face was serious. But you knew all that many, many years ago, Paul, and still you chose it, she said in a low voice. Well, and how should I have known? He demanded, I didn't know. I was told so. My heart, if you like, told me so. And I thought I knew. Youth always thinks it knows. Then one day it discovers that it is nearly fifty. Forty-four, Paul. Forty-four, then, and it finds that the glamour isn't in front but behind. Yes, I knew and chose, if that's knowing and choosing. But it's a costly choice we're called on to make when we're young. Miss Bengoff's eyes were on the floor. Without moving them, she said, You're not regretting it, Paul? Am I not? He took her up. Upon my word I allegedly thought I am. What do I get in return for it all? You know what you get, she replied. She might have known from her tone what else he could have had for the holding up of a finger, herself. She knew, but could not tell him, that he could have done no better thing for himself. Had he any time these ten years asked her to marry him, she would have replied quietly, Very well, when? He had never thought of it. Yours is the real work, she continued quietly. Without you we jackals couldn't exist. You and a few like you hold everything upon your shoulders. For a minute there was silence. Then it occurred to Ollron that this was common vulgar grumbling. It was not his habit. Suddenly he rose and began to stack cups and plates on the tray. Sorry you catch me like this, Elsie, he said, with a little laugh. No, I'll take them out. Then we'll go for a walk if you like. He carried out the tray and then began to show Miss Bengoff round his flat. She made few comments. In the kitchen she asked what an old faded square of reddish freeze was, that Mrs Barrett used as a cushion for her wooden chair. That, I should be glad if you could tell me what it is, Ollron replied, as he unfolded the bag and related the story of its finding in the window-seat. I think I know what it is, said Miss Bengoff. It's been used to wrap up a harp before putting it into its case. I jove that's probably just what it was, said Ollron. I couldn't make neither head nor tail of it. They finished the tour of the flat and returned to the sitting-room. And who lives in the rest of the house? Miss Bengoff asked. I dare say a tramp sleeps in the cellar occasionally. Nobody else. Hmm, well, I'll tell you what I think about it if you like. I should like. You'll never work here. Oh, said Ollron quickly. Why not? You'll never finish rumbly here. Why, I don't know, but you won't. I know it. You'll have to leave before you get on with that book. He mused for a moment and then said, Isn't that a little prejudice, Delcy? Perfectly ridiculous. As an argument it hasn't a leg to stand on. But there it is, she replied. Her mouth once more full of the large-headed hat-fins. Ollron was reaching down his hat and coat. He laughed. I can only hope you're entirely wrong, he said, for I shall be in a serious mess if rumbly isn't out in the autumn. As Ollron sat by his fire that evening pondering Miss Bengoff's prognostication that difficulties awaited him in his work, he came to the conclusion that it would have been far better had she kept her beliefs to herself. No man does a thing better for having his confidence dampened at the outset, and to speak of difficulties is, in a sense, to make them. Speech itself becomes a deterrent act to which other discouragements accrete until the very event of which warning is given is as likely as not to come to pass. He heartily confounded her and influenced hostile to the completion of rumbly had been born. And in some illogical, dogmatic way women seem to have, she had attached this antagonistic influence to his new abode. Was ever anything so absurd? You'll never finish rumbly here, why not? Was this her idea of the luxury that saps the springs of action and brings a man down to indolence and dropping out of the race? The place was well enough, it was entirely charming for that matter, but it was not so demoralizing as all that. No, else he had missed the mark that time. He moved his chair to look around the room that smiled, positively smiled in the firelight. He too smiled, as if pity was to be entertained for a maligned apartment. Even that slight lack of robust colour he had remarked was not noticeable in the soft glow, the drawn chintz curtains. They had a flowered and trellised pattern with baskets and noten pipes, fell in long quiet folds to the window-seats. The rows of bindings in old bookcases took the light richly. The last trace of soloness had gone with the daylight, and if the truth must be told, it had been Elsie herself who had seemed a little out of the picture. That reflection struck him a little, and presently he returned to it. Yes, the room had, quite accidentally, done Miss Bengoff a disservice that afternoon. It had in some subtle but unmistakable way placed her, marked a contrast of qualities. Assuming for the sake of argument the slightly ridiculous proposition that the room in which Oleron sat was characterised by a certain sparsity and lack of vigour, so much the worse for Miss Bengoff, she certainly erred on the side of redundancy and general muchness. And if one must contrast abstract qualities, Oleron inclined to the austere in taste. Yes, here Oleron had made a distinct discovery. He wondered he had not made it before. He pictured Miss Bengoff again, as she had appeared that afternoon, large, showy, moistly pink, with that quality of the prize bloom exuding as it were from her, and instantly she suffered in his thought. He even recognised now that he had noticed something odd at the time, and that unconsciously his attitude, even while she had been there, had been one of criticism. The mechanism of her was a little obvious, her melting humidity was the result of analysable processes, and behind her there had seemed to lurk some dim shape, emblematic of mortality. He had never during the ten years of their intimacy dreamed for a moment of asking her to marry him. Nonetheless, he now felt for the first time a thankfulness that he had not done so. Then suddenly and swiftly his face flamed that he should be thinking thus of his friend. Elsie Bengoff, with whom he had spent weeks and weeks of afternoons, she, the good chum, on whose help he would have counted, had all the rest of the world failed him, she, whose loyalty to him would not he knew swerve as long as there was breath in her. Elsie, to be even in thought, dissected thus. He was an ingrate and a cad. Had she been there in that moment, he would have abased himself before her. For ten minutes and more he sat, still gazing into the fire, with that humiliating red fading slowly from his cheeks. All was still, within and without, save for a tiny musical tinkling that came from his kitchen, the dripping of water from an imperfectly turned-off tap into the vessel beneath it. Mechanically he began to beat with his finger to the faintly heard falling of the drops. The tiny regular movement seemed to hasten that shameful withdrawal from his face. He grew cool once more, and when he resumed his meditation he was all unconscious that he took it up again at the same point. It was not only her florid superfluity of build that he had approached in the attitude of criticism. He was conscious also of the wide differences between her mind and his own. He felt no thankfulness that up to a certain point their natures had ever run companionably side by side. He was now full of questions beyond that point. Their intellects diverged. There was no denying it. He was inclined to doubt whether there had been any real coincidence. True, he had read his writings to her and she had appeared to speak comprehendingly and to the point. But what can a man do, who, having assumed that another sees as he does, is suddenly brought up sharp by something that falsifies and discredits all that has gone before? He doubted all now. It did for a moment occur to him that the man who demands of a friend more than can be given to him is in danger of losing that friend, but he put the thought aside. Again he ceased to think and again moved his finger to the dripping of the tap. And now, he resumed by and by, if these things were true of Elsie Bengoff, they were also true of the creation of which she was the prototype Romali Bishop. And since he could say of Romali what for very shame he could not say of Elsie, he gave his thoughts rain. He did so in that smiling, fire-lighted room of the faintly heard tap. There was no longer any doubt about it. He hated the central character of his novel. Even as he had described her physically, she overpowered the senses. She was coarse-fibred, over-coloured, rank. It became true the moment he formulated his thought. Gulliver had described the brobdy Gnagian maids of honour thus, and mentally and spiritually she corresponded was unsensitive, limited, common. The model, he closed his eyes for a moment, the model stuck out through fifteen vulgar and blatant chapters to such a pitch that, without seeing the reason, he had been unable to begin the sixteenth. He marveled that it had only just dawned upon him. And this was to have been his Beatrice, his vision. As Elsie she was to have gone into the furnace of his art, and she was to have come out the woman all men desire. Her thoughts were to have been cold from his own finest, her form from his dearest dreams, and her setting wherever he could find one fit for her worth. He had brooded long before making the attempt. Then one day he had felt her stir within him as her mother feels a quickening. And he had begun to write, and so he had added chapter to chapter. And those fifteen sodden chapters were what he had produced. Again he sat, softly moving his finger. Then he bestowed himself. She must go. All fifteen chapters of her. That was settled. For what was to take her place in his mind was a blank, but one thing at a time. A man is not excused from taking the wrong course because the right one is not immediately revealed to him. Better would come if it was to come. In the meantime he rose, fetched the fifteen chapters, and read them over before he should drop them into the fire. But instead of putting them in the fire he let them fall from his hand. He became conscious of the dripping of the tap again. It had a tinkling gamut of four or five notes on which it rang irregular changes, and it was foolishly sweet and dulcimer-like. In his mind Overron could see the gathering of each drop, its little tremble on the lip of the tap, and the tiny percussion of its fall, blink, plunk, minimized almost to inaudibility. Following the lowest note there seemed to be a brief phrase, irregularly repeated, and presently Overron found himself waiting for the recurrence of this phrase. It was quite pretty. But it did not conduce to wakefulness, and Overron dozed over his fire. When he awoke again the fire had burned low and the flames of the candles were licking the rims of the Sheffield sticks. Sluggishly he rose yawned and went his nightly round of door locks and window fastenings and fastened his bedroom. Soon he slept soundly. But a curious little sequel followed on the morrow. Mrs. Barrett usually tapped, not at his door, but at the wooden wall, beyond which lay Overron's bed. And then Overron rose, put on his dressing-gown, and admitted her. He was not conscious that, as he did so that morning, he hummed an air. But Mrs. Barrett lingered with her hand on the door-knob and a face a little averted and smiling. "'To hear me,' her soft falsetto rose. "'But that will be a very old tune, Mr. Overron. I will not have heard it for this forty years.' "'What tune?' Overron asked. "'The tune, indeed, that you was humming, sir.' Overron had his thumb in the flap of a letter that remained there. "'I was humming.' "'Sing it, Mrs. Barrett.' Mrs. Barrett prutted. "'I have no voice for singing, Mr. Overron. It was an pew was a singer of our family, but the tune will be very old, and it's called the beckoning fair one.' "'Try to sing it,' said Overron, his thumb still in the envelope, and Mrs. Barrett, with much dimpling and confusion, hummed the air. "'They do say it was sung to a harp, Mr. Overron, and it will be very old,' she concluded. "'And I was singing that.' "'Indeed you was. I would not be likely to tell you lies.' "'With a very well, let me have breakfast.' Overron opened his letter. But the trifling circumstance struck him as more odd than he would have admitted to himself. The phrase he had hummed had been that which he had associated with falling from the tap on the evening before. End of chapter 1, part 1 Chapter number 1, part 2 of Widdishans This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Recording by Kevin Green. Widdishans by Oliver Onions. Chapter 1, Part 2 Even more curious that the commonplace dripping of an ordinary water-tap should have tallied so closely with an actually existing air was another result it had, namely that it awakened or seemed to awaken in Oleron an abnormal sensitiveness to other noises of the old house. It has been remarked that silence obtains its fullest and most impressive quality when it is broken by some minute sound and truth to tell the place was never still. Perhaps the mildness of the spring air operated on its torpid old timbers. Perhaps Oleron's fires caused it to stretch its old anatomy, and certainly a whole world of insect life bored and borrowed in its borks and joists. At any rate, Oleron had only to sit quietly in his chair and wait for a minute or two in order to become aware of such a change in the auditory scale as comes upon a man who, conceiving the midsummer woods to be motionless and still, all at once finds his ear sharpened to the crepitation of a myriad insects. And he smiled to think of a man's arbitrary distinction between that which has life and that which has not. Here, quite apart from such recognisable sounds as the scampering of mice, the falling of plaster behind his panelling, and the popping of purses or coffins from his fire, was a whole house talking to him, had he but known its language. Beams settled with a tired sigh into their old mortises. Creatures ticked in the walls. Joints cracked. Boards complained. With no palpable stirring of the air, window sashes changed their positions with a soft knock in their frames. And whether the place had life in this sense or not, it had at all events a winsome personality. It needed but an hour of musing for Oloron to conceive the idea that, as his own body stood in friendly relation to his soul, so by an extension and an attenuation his habitation might fantastically be supposed to stand in some relation to himself. He even amused himself with a far-fetched fancy that he might so identify himself with the place that some future tenant taking possession might regard it as, in a sense, haunted. It would be rather a joke if he, a perfectly harmless author, with nothing on his mind worse than a novel he had discovered he must begin again, should turn out to be laying the foundation of a future ghost. In proportion, however, as he felt this growing attachment to the fabric of his abode, Elsie Bengoff, from being merely unattracted, began to show a dislike of the place that was more and more marked, and she did not scruple to speak of her aversion. It doesn't belong to today at all, and for you especially it's bad, she said with decision. You're only too ready to let go your hold on actual things and to slip into apathy. You ought to be in a place with concrete floors and a patent gas meter and a tradesman's lift. And it would do you all the good in the world if you had a job that made you scramble and rub elbows with your fellow men. Now, if I could get you a job for, say, two or three days a week, one that would allow you heaps of time and proper work, would you take it? Somehow Oleron resented a little being diagnosed like this. He thanked Miss Bengoff, but without a smile. Thank you, but I don't think so. After all, each of us has his own life to live. He could not refrain from adding. His own life to live? How long is it since you were out, Paul? About two hours. I don't mean to buy stamps or to post a letter. How long is it since you had anything to do with it? Oh, some little time, perhaps. I don't know. Since I was here last? I haven't been out much. And has Romali progressed much better for your being cooped up? I think she has. I'm laying the foundations of her. I shall begin the actual writing presently. It seemed as if Miss Bengoff had forgotten their tussle about the first Romali. She frowned, turned half away, and then quickly turned again. Here in your head. If you mean, said Oleron slowly, that I have discarded the old Romali and am at work on a new one, you're right. I have still got that idea in my head. Something uncordial in his tone struck her, but she was a fighter. His own absurd sensitiveness hardened her. She gave a pshh of impatience. Where is the old one? She demanded abruptly. Why? asked Oleron. I want to show some of it to you. I want, if you're not wool-gathering entirely, to bring you back to your senses. This time it was he who turned his back. But when he turned round again, he spoke more gently. It's no good, Elsie. I'm responsible for the way I go, and you must allow me to go it. Even if it should seem wrong to you. Believe me, I am giving thought to it. The manuscript. I was on the point of burning it, but I didn't. That window-seat, if you must see it. Miss Bengoff crossed quickly to the window-seat and lifted the lid. Suddenly she gave a little exclamation and put the back of her hand to her mouth. She spoke over her shoulder. You ought to knock those nails in, Paul, she said. He strode to her side. What is it? What's the matter? He asked. I did knock them in, or rather pulled them out. You were left enough to scratch with, she replied, showing her hand. From the upper wrist to the knuckle of the little finger a welling red wound showed. Good gracious! Aldron ejaculated. Here, come to the bathroom and bathe it quickly. He hurried her to the bathroom and turned on warm water, and bathed and cleansed the bad-gash. Then, still holding the hand, he turned cold water on it, uttering broken phrases of astonishment and concern. Good Lord! How did that happen? As far as I knew I'd— Is this water too cold? Does that hurt? I can't imagine how on earth— No. One moment longer. I can bear it, she murmured, her eyes closed. Presently he led her back to the sitting-room and bound the hand in one of his handkerchiefs, but his face did not lose its expression of perplexity. He had spent half a day in opening and making serviceable the three window-boxes, and he could not conceive how he had come to leave an inch and a half of a rusty nail standing in the wood. He himself had opened the lids of each of them a dozen times and had not noticed any nail. But there it was. It shall come out now at all events," he muttered, as he went for a pair of pincers, and he made no mistake about it that time. Elsie Bangoff had sunk into a chair, and her face was rather white, but in her hand was the manuscript of Romerly. She had not finished with the Romerly yet. Presently she returned to the charge. Oh, Paul, it will be the greatest mistake you ever, ever made if you do not publish this!" she said. He hung his head genuinely distressed. He could not get that incident of the nail out of his head, and Romerly occupied a second place in his thoughts for the moment. But still she insisted, and when presently he spoke it was almost as if he asked her pardon for something. What can I say, Elsie? I can only hope that when you see the new version you will see how right I am, and if in spite of all you do not like her well," he made a hopeless gesture. Don't you see that I must be guided by my own lights? She was silent. Come, Elsie, he said gently. We've got along well so far. Don't let us split on this. The last words had hardly passed his lips before he regretted them. She had been nursing her injured hand with her eyes once more closed, but her lips and lids quivered simultaneously. Her voice shook as she spoke. I can't help saying it, Paul, but you are so greatly changed. Harsh, Elsie, he murmured soothingly. You've had a shock. Rest for a while. How could I change? I don't know, but you are. You've not been yourself ever since you came here. I wish you'd never seen the place. It's stopped your work. It's making you into a person I hardly know, and it's made me horribly anxious about you. Oh, how my hand is beginning to throb! Poor child, he murmured. Would you let me take you to a doctor and have it properly dressed? No, I should be all right presently. I'll keep it raised. She put her elbow on the back of the chair, and the bandaged hand rested lightly on his shoulder. At that touch an entirely new anxiety stirred suddenly within him. Hundreds of times previously, on their jaunts and excursions, she had slipped her hand within his arm as she might have slipped it into the arm of a brother, and he had accepted the little affectionate gesture as a brother might have accepted it. But now, for the first time, there rushed into his mind a hundred startling questions. Her eyes were still closed, and her head had fallen pathetically back, and there was a lost and ineffable smile on her parted lips. The truth broke in upon him. Oh, God! And he had never divined it. And stranger than all was that, now that he did see that she was lost in love of him, there came to him not sorrow and humility and abasement, but something else that he struggled in vain against, something entirely strange and new that, had he analysed it, he would have found to be petulance and irritation and resentment and un gentleness. The sudden selfish prompting mastered him before he was aware. He all but gave it words. What was she doing there at all? Why was she not getting on with her own work? Why was she here interfering with his? Who had given her this guardianship over him that lately she had put forward so assertively? Changed? It was she, not himself, who had changed. But by the time she had opened her eyes again he had overcome his resentment sufficiently to speak gently, albeit with reserve. I wish you would let me take you to a doctor. She rose. No, thank you, Paul, she said. I will go now. If I need a dressing, I'll get one. Take the other hand, please. Goodbye. He did not attempt to detain her. He walked with her to the foot of the stairs, halfway along the narrow alley she turned. It would be a long way to come if you happened not to be in, she said. I'll send you a postcard next time. At the gate she turned again. Leave here, Paul, she said, with a mournful look. Everything's wrong with this house. Then she was gone. Oleron returned to his room. He crossed straight to the window-box. He opened the lid and stood long looking at it. Then he closed it again and turned away. That's rather frightening, he muttered. It's simply not possible that I should not have removed that nail. Oleron knew very well what Elsie had meant when she had said that her next visit would be preceded by a postcard. She too had realised that at last, at last he knew, knew and didn't want her. It gave him a miserable pitiful pang therefore when she came again within a week knocking at the door unannounced. She spoke from the landing. She did not intend to stay, she said, and had to press her before she would so much as enter. Her excuse for calling was that she had heard of an inquiry for short stories that he might be wise to follow up. He thanked her. Then her business over she seemed anxious to get away again. Oleron did not seek to detain her. Even he saw through the pretext of the stories and he accompanied her down the stairs. But Elsie Bengoff had no luck whatever in that house. A second accident befell her. Halfway down the staircase there was the sharp sound of splintering wood and she checked a loud cry. Oleron knew the woodwork to be old but he himself had ascended and descended frequently enough without mishap. Elsie had put her foot through one of the stairs. He sprang to her side an alarm. Oh, I say, my poor girl! She laughed hysterically. It's my weight. I know I'm getting fat. Keep still. Let me clear these splinters away. He muttered between his teeth. She continued to laugh and sob that it was her weight. She was getting fat. He thrust downwards at the broken boards. The extrication was no easy matter and her torn boot showed him how badly the foot and ankle within it must be abraded. Good God! Good God! he muttered over and over again. I shall be too heavy for anything soon. She sobbed and laughed. But she refused to re-ascend and to examine her hurt. No, let me go quickly. Let me go quickly! she repeated. But it's a frightful gash. No, not so bad. Let me get away quickly. I'm not wanted. At her words that she was not wanted, his head dropped as if she had given him a buffet. Elsie! he choked brokenly and shocked. But she too made a quick gesture, as if she put something violently aside. Oh, Paul, not that. Not you. Of course I do mean that, too, in a sense. Oh, you know what I mean. But if the other can't be, spare me this now. I wouldn't have come, but... Oh, I did. I did try to keep away. It was intolerable heart-breaking. But what could he do? What could he say? He did not love her. Let me go. I'm not wanted. Let me take away what's left of me. Dear Elsie, you're very dear to me. But again she made the gesture, as if putting something violently aside. No, not that. Not anything less. Don't offer me anything less. Leave me a little pride. Let me get my hat and coat. Let me take you to a doctor, he muttered. But she refused. She refused even the support of his arm. She gave another, unsteady laugh. I'm sorry I broke your stairs, Paul. You will go and see about the short stories, won't you? He groaned. Then if you won't see a doctor, will you go across the square and let Mrs. Barrett look at you? Look, there's Barrett passing now. The long-nosed Barrett was looking curiously down the alley, but as Olaron was about to call him, he made off without a word. Elsie seemed anxious for nothing so much as to be clear of the place, and finally promised to go straight to a doctor but insisted on going alone. Goodbye, she said. And Olaron watched her until she was past the hatchet-like to let boards, as if he feared that even they might fall upon her and maim her. That night Olaron did not dine. He had far too much on his mind. He walked from room to room of his flat, as if he could have walked away from Elsie Bengoff's haunting cry that still rang in his ears. I'm not wanted. Don't offer me anything less. Let me take away what's left of me. Oh, if he could only have persuaded himself that he loved her. He walked until twilight fell. Then, without lighting candles, he stirred up the fire and flung himself into a chair. Poor, poor Elsie. But even while his art ached for her, it was out of the question. If only he had known, if only he had used common observation, but those walks, those sisterly takings of the arm. What a fool he had been. Well, it was too late now. It was she, not he, who must now act. Act by keeping away. He would help her all he could. He himself would not sit in her presence. If she came, he would hurry her out again as fast as he could. Poor, poor Elsie. His room grew dark, the fire burned dead, and he continued to sit, wincing from time to time as a fresh tortured phrase rang again in his ears. Then suddenly he knew not why. He found himself anxious for her in a new sense. Uneasy about her personal safety. A horrible fancy that even then she might be looking over an embankment down into dark water, that she might even now be glancing up at the hook on the door, took him. Women had been known to do those things. Then there would have been an inquest, and he himself would be called upon to identify her, and would be asked how she had come by an ill-healed wound on the hand, and a bad abrasion of the ankle. Barrett would say that he had seen her leaving his house. Then he recognised that his thoughts were morbid. By an effort of will he put them aside, and sat for a while listening to the faint creakings and tickings and wrappings within his panelling. If only he could have married her. But he couldn't. Her face had risen before him again, as he had seen it on the stairs, drawn with pain and ugly and swollen with tears. Ugly, yes, positively blubbered. If tears were women's weapons, as they were said to be, such tears were weapons turned against themselves. Suicide again. Then all at once he found himself attentively considering her two accidents. Extraordinary they had been, both of them. He could not have left that old nail standing in the wood. Why, he had fetched tools specially from the kitchen, and he was convinced that the step that had broken beneath her weight had been as sound as the others. It was inexplicable. If these things could happen, anything could happen. There was not a beam nor a jam in the place that might not fall without warming, not a plank that might not crash inwards, not a nail that might not become a dagger. The whole place was full of life even now, as he sat there in the dark, he heard its crowds of noises as if the house had been one great microphone. Only half conscious that he did so, he had been sitting for some time identifying these noises, attributing to each crack or creak or knock its material cause. But there was one noise, which again, not fully conscious of the omission, he had not sought to account for. It had last come some minutes ago, it came again now a sort of soft, sweeping rustle that seemed to hold an almost inaudibly minute crackling. For half a minute or so it had Oleron's attention. Then his heavy thoughts were of Elsie Bengoff again. He was nearer to loving her in that moment than he had ever been. He thought how to some men their loved ones were but the dearer for those poor mortal blemishes that tell us we are but sojourners on earth, with a common fate not far distant that makes it hardly worthwhile to do anything but love for the time remaining. Strangling sobs, blearing tears, bodies buffeted by sickness, hearts and minds callous and hard with the rubs of the world, how little love there would be were these things a barrier to love. In that sense he did love Elsie Bengoff. What her happiness had never moved in him, her sorrow almost awoke. Suddenly his meditation went. His ear had once more become conscious of that soft and repeated noise, the long sweep with the almost inaudible crackle in it. Again and again it came, with a curious insistence and urgency. It quickened a little as he became increasingly attentive. It seemed to Oleron that it grew louder. All at once he started bolt upright in his chair, tense and listening. The silky rustle came again. He was trying to attach it to something. The next moment he had leapt to his feet, unnerved and terrified. His chair hung poised for a moment and then went over, setting the fire-iron's clattering as it fell. There was only one noise in the world like that, which had caused him to spring thus to his feet. The next time it came Oleron felt behind him, at the empty air with his hand, and back slowly until he found himself against the wall. God in heaven! The ejaculation broke from Oleron's lips. The sound had ceased. The next moment he had given a high cry. What is it? What's there? Who's there? A sound of scuttling caused his knees to bend under him for a moment, but that he knew was a mouse. That was not something that his stomach turned sick and his mind reeled to entertain. That other sound, the like of which was not in the world, had now entirely ceased, and again he called. He called and continued to call. And then another terror, a terror of the sound of his own voice, seized him. He did not dare to call again. His shaking hand went to his pocket for a match, but found none. He thought there might be matches on the mantelpiece. He worked his way to the mantelpiece round a little recess without for a moment leaving the wall. Then his hand encountered the mantelpiece and groped along it. A box of matches fell to the hearth. He could just see them in the firelight, but his hand could not pick them up until he had cornered them inside the fender. Then he rose and struck a light. The room was as usual. He struck a second match. A candle stood on the table. He lighted it, and the flame sank for a moment and then burned up clear. Again he looked round. There was nothing. There was nothing, but there had been something, and might still be something. Formerly Oleron had smiled at the fantastic thought that, by emerging and interplay of identities between himself and his beautiful room, he might be preparing a ghost for the future. It not had occurred to him that there might have been a similar merging and coalescence in the past. Yet with this staggering impossibility he was now face to face. Something did persist in the house. It had a tenant other than himself, and that talent, whatsoever or whosoever, had appalled Oleron's soul by producing the sound of a woman brushing her hair. Without quite knowing how he came to be there, Oleron found himself striding over the loose board he had temporarily placed on the step broken by Miss Bengoff. He was hapless and descending the stairs. Not until later did their return to him a hazy memory that he had left the candle burning on the table. Had opened the door no wider than was necessary to allow the passage of his body, and had sidled out, closing the door softly behind him. At the foot of the stairs another shock awaited him. Something dashed with a flurry up from the disused cellars and disappeared out of the door. It was only a cat, but Oleron gave a childish sob. He passed out of the gate and stood for a moment under the two led boards, blocking foolishly at his lip and looking up at the glimmer of light behind one of his red blinds. Then still looking over his shoulder he moved stumblingly up the square. There was a small public house round the corner. Oleron had never entered it, but he entered it now and put down a shilling that missed the counter by inches. "'Br—Br—Br—Brand—Brandy!' he said, and then stooped to look for the shilling. He had the little soardusted bar to himself. What company there was, carters and labourers, and the small tradesmen of the neighbourhood, was gathered in the Father compartment, beyond the space where the white-haired landlady moved among her taps and bottles. Oleron sat down on a hardwood settee setee with a perforated seat, drank half his brandy, and then thinking he might as well drink it as spill it, finished it. Then he fell to wondering which of the men whose voices he heard across the public house would undertake the removal of his effects on the morrow. In the meantime he ordered more brandy. For he did not intend to go back to that room where he had left the candle burning. Oh, no! He couldn't have faced even the entry and the staircase with the broken step, certainly not that pith-white fascinating room. He would go back for the present to his old arrangement of workroom and separate sleeping-quarters. He would go to his old landlady at once, presently, when he had finished his brandy, and see if she could put him up for the night. His glass was empty now. He rose, had it refilled, and sat down again. And if anybody asked his reason for removing again, oh, he had reason enough, reason enough. Nails that put themselves back into wood again, and gashed people's hands, steps that broke when you trod on them, and women who came into a man's place and brushed their hair in the dark, were reasons enough. He was quarrelous and injured about it all. He had taken the place for himself, not for invisible women to brush their hair in. That lawyer fellow in Lincoln's Inn should be told so, too, before many hours were out. It was outrageous letting people in for agreements like that. A cut glass partition divided the compartment where Oleron sat from the space where the white-haired landlady moved, but it stopped seven or eight inches above the level of the counter. There was no partition at the farther bar. Presently, Oleron, raising his eyes, saw that faces were watching him through the aperture. The faces disappeared when he looked at them. He moved to a corner where he could not be seen from the other bar, but this brought him into line with the white-haired landlady. She knew him by sight, had doubtless seen him passing and repassing, and presently she made a remark on the weather. Oleron did not know what he replied, but it suffice to call forth the further remark that the winter had been a bad one for influenza, but that the spring weather seemed to be coming at last. Even this slight contact with the common-place steadied Oleron a little. An idle nascent wonder whether the landlady brushed her hair every night, and if so whether it gave out those little electric cracklings was shut down with a snap, and Oleron was better. With his next glass of brandy he was all for going back to his flat. Not to go back, indeed he would go back. They should very soon see whether he was to be turned out of his place like that. He began to wonder why he was doing the rather unusual thing he was doing at that moment, unusual for him, sitting, hapless, drinking brandy in a public house. Because he were to tell the white-haired landlady all about it, to tell her that a caller had scratched her hand on a nail, had later had the bad luck to put her foot through a rotten stair, and that he himself, in an old house full of squeaks and creeks and whispers, had heard a minute noise, and had bolted from it in fright. What would she think of him? That he was mad, of course. Sure! The real truth of the matter was that he hadn't been doing enough work to occupy him. He had been dreaming his days away, filling his head with a lot of moonshine about their new Romilly, as if the old one was not good enough, and now he was surprised that the devil should enter an empty head. Yes, he would go back. He would take a walk in the air first. He hadn't walked enough lately. And then he would take himself in hand, settle the hash of that sixteenth chapter of Romilly. Fancy! He had actually been fool enough to think of destroying fifteen chapters. And thenceforward he would remember that he had obligations to his fellow men, and work to do in the world. There was the matter in a nutshell. He finished his brandy and went out. He had walked for some time before any other bearing of the matter, than that on himself occurred to him. At first the fresh air had increased the heady effect of the brandy he had drunk. But afterwards his mind grew clearer than it had been since morning. And the clearer it grew, the less final did his boastful self-assurance has become, and the firmer his conviction that when all explanations had been made there remained something that could not be explained. His hysteria of an hour before had passed. He grew steadily calmer. But the disquieting conviction remained. A deep fear took possession of him. It was a fear for Elsie. For something in his place was inimical to her safety. Of themselves her two accidents might not have persuaded him of this. But she herself had said it. I'm not wanted here. And she had declared that there was something wrong with the place. She had seen it before he had, well and good. One thing stood out clearly, namely that if this was so she must be kept away for quite another reason than that which had so confounded and humiliated Oloran. Luckily she had expressed her intention of staying away. She must be held to that intention. He must see to it. And he must see to it all the more that he now saw his first impulse never to set foot in the place again was absurd. People did not do that kind of thing. With Elsie made secure he could not with any respect to himself suffer himself to be turned out by a shadow, nor even by a danger merely because it was a danger. He had to live somewhere and he would live there. He must return. He musted the faint chill of fear that came with the decision and turned in his walk abruptly. Should fear grow on him again he would perhaps take one more glass of brandy. But by the time he reached the short street that led to the square he was too late for more brandy. The little public house was still lighted but closed, and one or two men were standing talking on the curb. Oloran noticed that a sudden silence fell on them as he passed, and he noticed further that the long-nosed barret, whom he passed a little lower down, did not return his good night. He turned in at the broken gate, hesitated merely, an instant in the alley, and then mounted his stairs again. Only an inch of candle remained in the Sheffield stick, and Oloran did not light another one. Deliberately he forced himself to take it up and to make the tour of his five rooms before retiring. It was as he returned from the kitchen across his little hall that he noticed that a letter lay on the floor. He carried it into his sitting-room and glanced at the envelope before opening it. It was unstamped and had been put into the door by hand. Its handwriting was clumsy, and it ran from beginning to end without comma or period. Oloran read the first line, turned to the signature, and then finished the letter. It was from the man Barrett, and it informed Oloran that he, Barrett, would be obliged if Mr. Oloran would make other arrangements from the preparing of his breakfast and the cleaning out of his place. The sting lay in the tail, that is to say the postscript. This consisted of a text of scripture. It embodied an illusion that could only be to Elsie Bengoff. A seldom seen frown had cut deeply into Oloran's brow. So that was it. Very well they would see about that on the morrow. For the rest this seemed merely another reason why Elsie should keep away. Then his suppressed rage broke out. The foul-mounted lot. The devil himself could not have given a leer at anything that had ever passed between Paul, Oloran, and Elsie Bengoff. Yet this nosing rascal must be prying and talking. Oloran crumpled the paper up, held it in the candle-flame, and then ground the ashes under his heel. One useful purpose, however, the letter had served. It had created in Oloran a wrathful blaze that effectually banished pale shadows. Nevertheless one other puzzling circumstance was to close the day. As he undressed he challenged to glance at his bed. The covelets bore an impress as if somebody had lain on them. Oloran could not remember that he himself had lain down during the day. Offhand he would have said that certainly he had not, but after all he could not be positive. His indignation for Elsie, acting possibly with the residue of the brandy in him, excluded all other considerations, and he put out his candle, lay down, and passed immediately into a deep and dreamless sleep, which in the absence of Mrs. Barrett's morning call lasted almost once round the clock. To the man who pays heed to that voice within him which warns him that twilight and danger are settling over his soul, terror is apt to appear an absolute thing against which his heart must be safeguarded in a twink, unless there is to take place an alteration in the whole range and scale of his nature. Mercifully he has never fought a look for safeguards. Of the immediate and small and common and momentary things of life, of usages and observances and modes and conventions, he builds up fortifications against the powers of darkness. He is even content that, not terror only, but joy also, should for working purposes be placed in the category of the absolute things, and the last reason he will commit will be that breaking down of terms and limits that strikes not at one man, but at the welfare of the souls of all. In his own person Oleron began to commit this treason. He began to commit it by admitting the inexplicable and horrible to an increasing familiarity. He did it insensibly, unconsciously, by a neglect of the things that he now regarded it as an impertence in Elsie Bengoff to have prescribed. Two months before the words, a haunted house, applied to his lovely bemusing dwelling, would have chilled his marrow. Now, his scale of sensation becoming depressed, he could ask, haunted by what, and remain unconscious that horror, when it can be proved to be relative by so much loses its proper quality. He was setting aside the landmarks. Mists and confusion had begun to enwrap him. And he was conscious of nothing so much as of a voracious inquisitiveness. He wanted to know. He was resolved to know, nothing but the knowledge would satisfy him, and craftily he cast about for means whereby he might attain it. He might have spared his craft. The matter was the easiest imaginable. As in time past he had known in his writing moments when his thoughts had seemed to rise of themselves, and to embody themselves in words not to be altered afterwards, so now the questions he put himself seemed to be answered, even in the moment of their asking. There was exhilaration in the swift easy process. He had known no such joy in his own power since the days when his writing had been a daily freshness and a delight to him. It was almost as if the course he must pursue was being dictated to him. And the first thing he must do, of course, was to define the problem. He defined it in terms of mathematics. Granted that he had not the place to himself, granted that the old house had inexpressibly caught and engaged his spirit, granted that by virtue of the common denominator of the place, this unknown co-tenant stood in some relation to himself. What next? Clearly the nature of the other numerator must be ascertained. And how? Ordinarily this would not have seemed simple, but to Oleron it was now perlucidly clear. The key, of course, lay in his half-written novel, or rather in both Romulus the old and the proposed new one. A little while before Oleron would have thought himself mad to have embraced such an opinion. Now he accepted the dizzying hypothesis without a quiver. He began to examine the first and second Romulus. From the moment of his doing so, the thing advanced by leaps and bounds, swiftly he reviewed the history of the Romuli of the fifteen chapters. He remembered clearly now that he had found her insufficient on the very first morning on which he had sat down to work in his new place. Other instances of his aversion leapt up to confirm his obscure investigation. There had come the night when he had hardly forebwn to throw the whole thing into the fire, and the next morning he had begun the planning of the new Romuli. It had been on that morning that Mrs. Barrett, overhearing him, humming a brief phrase that the dripping of a tap the night before had suggested, had informed him that he was singing some air he had never in his life heard before called the beckoning fair one. The beckoning fair one! With scarcely a pause in thought he continued. The first Romuli, having been definitely thrown over, the second had instantly fastened herself upon him, clamouring for birth in his brain. He even fancied now looking back that there had been something like passion, hate almost, in the supplanting, and that more than once a stray thought given to his discarded creation had, it was astonishing how credible Oleron found the almost unthinkable idea, had offended the supplanter. Yet that a malignancy almost homicidal should be extended to his fiction's poor mortal prototype, in spite of his enuring to a scale in which the horrible was now a thing to be fingered and turned this way and that, a good God broke from Oleron. This intrusion of the first Romuli's prototype into his thought again was a factor that for the moment brought his inquiry into the nature of his problem to a termination. The mere thought of Elsie was fatal to anything abstract. For another thing he could not yet think of that letter of Barrett's nor of a little scene that had followed it without a mounting of colour and a quick contraction of the brow. For, wisely or not, he had had that argument out at once. Striding across the square on the following morning he had bearded Barrett on his own doorstep. Coming back again a few minutes later he had been strongly of opinion that he had only made matters worse. The man had been vagueness itself. He had not been to be either challenged or brow beaten into anything more definite than a muttered ferargo in which the words, certain things, Mrs. Barrett, respectable Aus, if the gap fits. Proceedings that shall be nameless. Had been constantly repeated. Not that I make any charge, he had concluded. Charge! Oleron had cried. I have my ideas of things as I don't doubt you have yours. Ideas mine! Oleron had cried rothfully, immediately dropping his voice as heads had appeared at windows of the square. Look you here, my man! You have an unwholesome mind which probably you can't help, but a tongue which you can help and shall. If there is a breath of this repeated, I'll not be taught to on my own doorstep like this by anybody," Barrett had blusted. You shall, and I'm doing it. Don't you forget there's a gourd above all who has said, You're a low scandal-monger! and so forth, continuing badly what was already badly begun. Oleron had returned rothfully to his own house, and thence forward, looking out of his windows had seen Barrett's face at odd times lifting blinds or peering round curtains, as if he sought to put himself in possession of heaven knew what evidence, in case it should be required of him. The unfortunate occurrence made certain minor differences in Oleron's domestic arrangements. Barrett's tongue he gathered had already been busy. He was looked at to scance by the dwellers of the square, and he judged it better until he should be able to obtain other help, to make his purchases of provisions a little farther afield rather than at the small shops of the immediate neighbourhood. For the rest, housekeeping was no new thing to him, and he would resume his old bachelor habits. Besides, he was deep in certain rather abstruse investigations, in which it was better that he should not be disturbed. He was looking out of his window on midday rather tired, not very well, and glad that it was not very likely that he would have to stir out of doors, when he saw Elsie Bengoff crossing the square towards his house. The weather had broken. It was a raw and gusty day, and she had to force her way against the wind that set her ample skirts bellying about her opulent figure, and her veils spinning and streaming behind her. Oleron acted swiftly and instinctively, seizing his hat he sprang to the door, and descended the stairs at a run. A sort of panic had seized him. She must be prevented from setting foot in the place. As he ran along the alley he was conscious that his eyes went up to the eaves, as if something drew them. He did not know that a slate might not accidentally fall. He met her at the gate and spoke with curious volubleness. This is really too bad, Elsie, just as I am urgently called away. I am afraid it can't be helped, though, and that you'll have to think me an inhospitable beast. He poured it out just as it came into his head. She asked if he was going to town. Yes, yes, to town, he replied. I've got to call on—on chambers. You know chambers, don't you? No, I remember you don't. A big nun you once saw me with her. I ought to have gone yesterday, and this he felt to be a brilliant effort. And he's going out of town this afternoon to Brighton. I had a letter from him this morning. He took her arm and a letter dropped to the square. She had to remind him that his way to town lay in the other direction. Of course, how stupid of me! he said with a little loud laugh. I am so used to going the other way with you. Of course, it's the other way to the bus. Will you come along with me? I am so awfully sorry it's happened like this. They took the street to the bus terminus. This time Elsie bore no signs of having gone through interior struggles. If she detected anything unusual in his manner she made no comment, and he seeing her calm began to talk less recklessly through silences. By the time they reached the bus terminus, nobody seeing the pallid-faced man without an overcoat and the large ample-skirted girl at his side would have supposed that one of them was ready to sink on his knees for thankfulness that he had, as he believed, saved the other from a wildly unthinkable danger. They mounted to the top of the bus, over on protesting that he should not miss his overcoat, and that he found the day, if anything, rather oppressively hot. They sat down on a front seat. Now that this meeting was forced upon him, he had something else to say that would make demands upon his tact. It had been on his mind for some time, and was indeed peculiarly difficult to put. He revolved it for some minutes, and then, remembering the success of his story of a sudden call to town, cut the knot of his difficulty with another lie. I'm thinking of going away for a little while, Elsie, he said. She merely said, Oh! Somewhere for a change. I need a change. I think I shall go to-morrow, or the day after. Yes, to-morrow, I think. Yes, she replied. I don't quite know how long I shall be, he continued. I shall have to let you know when I am back. Yes, let me know. She replied, in an even tone. The tone was for her, suspiciously even. He was a little uneasy. You don't ask me where I'm going, he said, with a little comrade's effort to rally her. She was looking straight before her past the bus driver. I know, she said. He was startled. How? You know? You're not going anywhere, she replied. He found not a word to say. It was a minute or so before she continued in the same controlled voice she had employed from the start. You're not going anywhere. You weren't going out this morning. You only came out because I appeared. Don't behave as if we're strangers, Paul. A flush of pink had mounted to his cheeks. He noticed that the wind had given her the pink of early rhubarb. Still, he found nothing to say. Of course, you ought to go away, she continued. I don't know whether you look at yourself often in the glass, but you are rather noticeable. Several people have turned to look at you this morning. So, of course, you ought to go away, but you won't. And I know why. He shivered, coughed a little, and then broke silence. Then if you know, there's no use in continuing this discussion, he said curtly. Not for me, perhaps, but there is for you, she replied. Shall I tell you what I know? No, he said in a voice slightly raised. No, she asked, around eyes earnestly on him. No. Again he was getting out of patience with her. Again he was conscious of the strain. Her devotion and fidelity and love plagued him. She was only humiliating both herself and him. It would have been bad enough had he ever, by word or deed, given her cause for thus fastening herself on him. But there, that was the worst of that kind of life for a woman. Women, such as she, businesswoman, in and out of offices all the time, always, whether they realized it or not, made comradeship a cover for something else. They accepted the unconventional status, came and went freely as mended, were honestly taken by men at their own valuation, and then it turned out to be the other thing after all, and they went and fell in love. No wonder there was gossip in shops and squares and public houses. In a sense the gossipers were in the right of it, independent yet not efficient, with some of womanhood's graces forgone, and yet with all the woman's hunger and need, half sophisticated yet not wise. Oleron was tired of it all. And it was time he told her so. I suppose, he said tremblingly, looking down between his knees, I suppose the real trouble is in the life women who earn their own living are obliged to lead. He could not tell in what sense she took the lame generality. She merely replied, I suppose so. It can't be helped, he continued. But you do sacrifice a good deal. She agreed a good deal. Then she added after a moment. What, for instance? You may or may not be gradually attaining a new status, but you're in a false position today. It was very likely, she said. She hadn't thought of it much in that light. And he continued desperately. You're bound to suffer. Your most innocent acts are misunderstood. Motives you never dreamed of are attributed to you. And in the end it comes to— He hesitated a moment and then took the plunge. To the side-long look and the leer. She took his meaning with perfect ease. She merely shivered a little as she pronounced the name. Barrett. His silence told her the rest. Anything further that was to be said must come from her. It came as the bus stopped at a stage and fresh passengers mounted the stairs. You'd better get down here and go back full, she said. I understand perfectly. Perfectly, it isn't Barrett. You'd be able to deal with Barrett. It's merely convenient for you to say it's Barrett. I know what it is. But you said I wasn't to tell you that. Very well. But before you go, let me tell you why I came up this morning. In a dull tone he asked her why. Again she looked straight before her as she replied. I came to force your hand. Things couldn't go on as they have been going, you know. And now that's all over. All over. He repeated stupidly. All over. I want you now to consider yourself as far as I'm concerned perfectly free. I make only one reservation. He hardly had the spirit to ask her what that was. If I merely needed you, she said, Please don't give that a thought. That's nothing. I shan't come near for that. But, she dropped her voice, If you're in need of me, Paul, I shall know if you are, and you will be. Then I shall come at no matter what cost. You understand that? He could only groan. So that's understood, she concluded. And I think that's all. Now go back. I should advise you to walk back for your shivering. Goodbye. She gave him a cold hand, and he descended. He turned on the edge of the curb as the bus started again. For the first time in all the years he had known her, she parted from him with no smile and no wave of her long arm. End of Chapter 1, Part 2